


The Past Is A Foreign Country

by Contra



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Fix-It, Kinda, M/M, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 06:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18585859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Contra/pseuds/Contra
Summary: “I’m coming with you”, Bucky says as he walks into Steve’s provisional quarters in the rebuilt part of the Avengers compound.Steve doesn’t answer for a while. He fidgets with the file on his desk instead. “You don’t even know where I’m going.” At this point he’s got nothing remotely resembling a real plan yet, only a vague and desperate hope.Bucky shrugs. “The end of the line, I’m guessing.”(Steve and Bucky go into the past together, knowing full well it's never possible to truly go back. Or: In which Peggy Carter is happy and Steve and Bucky will be.)





	The Past Is A Foreign Country

**Author's Note:**

> Just watched Endgame and HOLY SHIT WHY DID BUCKY NOT COME WITH STEVE??????
> 
> Honestly there's no reason. None. They're both men out of time. Their storylines in the last few movies were always about each other. Not to mention the fact that Bucky is an internationally wanted fugitive in the present and Steve was pretty much the one guy on his side, so leaving him there by himself seems unwise.
> 
> ALSO PEGGY CARTER WAS CANONICALLY HAPPILY MARRIED TO A GUY STEVE SAVED AND SHE LOVED THE LIFE SHE LED.  
> Im not even attempting to explain the time travel logic in this movie bc there just flat out was none. But just retconning out Peggy's happy long life for a chance with her is NOT something I could see Steve doing, so that was dumb.
> 
> But also I can't see messing with causalities and stuff without consequences, even though Nebula canonically shot her younger self to death and was fine. So this doesn't change any big things. I might write that later, though. I recently read 11/22/1963 by Stephen King and this could make one hell of an AU.

“I’m coming with you”, Bucky says as he walks into Steve’s provisional quarters in the rebuilt part of the Avengers compound.

Steve doesn’t answer for a while. He fidgets with the file on his desk instead. “You don’t even know where I’m going.” At this point he’s got nothing remotely resembling a real plan yet, only a vague and desperate hope.

Bucky shrugs. “The end of the line, I’m guessing.”

 

The truth is, they can’t go back. Not completely. None of them understand time travel, or time itself for that matter, but Steve knows the lines that should be in Bucky’s face now, but aren't and he knows the look in his eyes. It’ll have to be enough.

“1970,” he says, and for a moment, it’s just another number. Another small point in an endless column of small points, decades and lives and hopes and tragedies away from everything they’ve ever known. But Peggy’s there. And he has to know if she’s happy.

Bucky smiles. “Okay.”

 

So they go forward.

 

And the thing is, Peggy _is_ happy. She’s married to Luke Thompson-Carter, who Bucky must have met a few times during the war and she loves him even though she cries when she sees Bucky and Steve.

She invites them for dinner of course. Luke seems to understand, maybe it’s a side effect of being married to Peggy, and spends the evening with a friend.

 

Her house is beautiful, the furniture more modern than Steve used to imagine it, and yet to his 21st century eyes it looks slightly dated. There are some pictures on her wall that he knows she’ll keep, even in the retirement home. Steve clutches the infinity stone in his pocket with one hand and holds onto Bucky with the other.

You can’t go back, that’s what she will tell him, or maybe has told him already, on her deathbed, years away.

Peggy asks a lot of questions they don’t have answers to and it’s only when they see the way she lights up talking about her husband, the passion in her voice at the mention of SHIELD, that they realize the feeling is mutual. It’s not really a fair trade, Steve thinks, she doesn’t know anything about SHIELD being Hydra and they don’t know anything about having a home.

 

“I’m happy,” she says and it’s the absolute truth, the kind of truth Steve has learned never lasts for more than one evening. “I’m so happy to see you both.”

They eat steak and potatoes and Peggy’s face crinkles with 25 years worth of beautiful lines when Bucky tells her it’s delicious. It’s a private sort of joke between him and Steve, though, when their eyes meet over the shared realization that food really does taste different in the past.

 

 

“It was a promise,” Steve tells her as he holds out his hand, and he’s given a lot of those, but this was a last one. Bucky watches them with an expression on his face that is neither sadness nor a smile.

And then they dance.

Peggy is light and warm and alive against his body. At some other time, he thinks, she’s already dead.

He loves her, but that knowledge remains.

“You’re not staying,” Peggy whispers, when the song is over. It’s not a question and it doesn’t require an answer. And of course there’s no way he can tell her that she was the one to go first.

 

So they don’t stay. They leave in the dead of night and Steve still has the stone in his pocket. He’s still got his hand on Bucky’s elbow, too. They walk to the end of the city and then they start running. They don’t stop for a very long time.

“I’m out here somewhere,” Bucky says, suddenly. They’re in the middle of a field, somewhere in New Jersey. “I’m out here and I can’t save myself.”

“We could,” Steve argues and this is a lie, but it is the kind of lie that has so much hope behind it that it’s almost a truth.

“You know, we have to give the stone back.” There’s something in Bucky’s voice that makes it clear it’s not a non-sequitur, even though Steve wishes it was.

 

(If it was a non-sequitur, this is how it would go:

Steve keeps the stone in his pocket forever and they destroy the Winter Soldier program at the height of the Cold War, which has a good chance of ending it. They go to the arctic and dig out his old body and they take down Hydra for good and they still don’t know how any of this works, time lines and paradoxes, they’ll just fix the entire universe and never stop running long enough for it to catch up.)

(Instead, Bucky kisses Steve in the middle of a field, somwhere in New Jersey.)

 

They leave the stone in a briefcase in Howard Stark’s office, on the desk that has a picture of Baby Tony on it, and walk out in stolen uniforms.

“Where do we go now?” Bucky asks, because they know how all of this is going to end and they don’t know if they’ll be able to bear it, watching the world burn again in its tired old way.

“What do you remember of 1970?” Steve asks back and Bucky shrugs and that’s it. They leave the base behind, with the full knowledge it’s infiltrated by Hydra, and maybe the world wouldn’t collapse if they changed it and maybe it would. But they’ve got half a century ahead until they’re expected back and as it happens, that half a century was stolen from them the first time around.


End file.
